Wednesday, December 10, 2014

CIA TORTURE, THE LASTEST SPENDING BILL AND OTHER WAYS THE UNITED STATES IS SCREWING US IN THE BUTT!

To say the news today is bleak is a massive understatement. The Dow is dropping, as is China and Japan's stock market. A lot of that has to do with the plummeting price of oil which I explained in a previous post is great for the consumer for catastrophic for everyone else. Oil is skirting $60 a barrel, a lot of which is due to a global slowdown, or in reality the Depression we have been hiding for the last few years which is back now with a vengeance. As of around 3 PM EST, the Dow is down 260 points and falling. What makes this truly unusual is that December is almost always one of the best months of the year thanks to Christmas. But now that the world consumer is tapped out, no one is buying anything and retail is fading fast.

As if our imploding economy wasn't bad enough, we had two reports come out over the last 24 hours: The CIA long delayed and frightening report on torture and the latest budget compromise made by corporatists on both sides of the aisle. Both of these are fact finding investigations into new and improved ways to fuck people in the ass, literally and figuratively.

Let's start with the torture report that most Republicans are screaming bloody murder about, except for John McCain who was actually tortured as a POW and knows what he is talking about. In it, we discover that George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and several others are actually war criminals just like many across the planet, and at home to a far lesser extent, have said and they should be arrested immediately. Yup, still waiting for that to happen. Might as well wish for a million dollars and a pony while I am at it.

So even though the report says we tortured people, at least 26 of whom were innocent, and got zero useful information from it (even though the CIA says differently with no proof to back up their claim), we still refuse to hold anyone accountable. Most of those names above cannot travel abroad or else risk arrest on foreign soil for war crimes charges which this report confirms. Yet just like the bankers that destroyed the economy or rich people like OJ and the Affluzena kid, no one pays for their crimes anymore. Unless you're poor than you are screwed.

Torture only works if you know for a fact that the suspect has information vital to your cause, like the code to a nuke about to go off in NYC or the location of hostages. Torturing information out of people just to torture will get you nowhere. Under these circumstances, people will say just about anything to make the pain stop.

The funny part is that this CIA report does not sound that different from a Nazi Germany report I found from the 40's which describes the exact same tactics to be used on Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other undesirables with the exact same results. It is insanity to expect different results from something we can prove does not work. Someone should be strapped to the electric chair for this but there is a fat chance of that.

Then there is the new budget. It is one giant ass ream for the USA by cutting pensions, removing the last vestiges of the Dodd Frank act that was protecting us from the banks, and, if you are Republicans supporter, does nothing to stop amnesty or Obamacare. If there's one thing the right and left can agree on, this bill sucks.

Here some passages from the Washington Post about what's really inside this disaster in the making:

CAMPAIGN FINANCE:The bill would dramatically expand the amount of money that wealthy political donors could inject into the national parties, drastically undercutting the 2002 landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul. Bottom line: A donor who gave the maximum $32,400 this year to the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee would be able to donate another $291,600 on top of that to the party’s additional arms -- a total of $324,000, ten times the current limit. Read more on this here.

CLEAN WATER ACT:

In a win for Republicans, the spending bill blocks the Environmental Protection Agency from applying the law to certain farm ponds and irrigation ditches -- a move that GOP aides said would benefit farmers.

DODD-FRANK:

Democrats agreed to make some of the biggest changes yet to the 2010 financial regulatory reforms. In a deal sought by Republicans, the bill would reverse Dodd-Frank requirements that banks "push out" some of derivatives trading into separate entities not backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporations. Ever since being enacted, banks have been pushing to reverse the change. Now, the rules would go back to the way they used to be. But in exchange, Democrats say they secured more money for the enforcement budgets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY:

The agency gets $8.1 billion, down $60 million from the last fiscal year. The agency's budget has been slashed by $2.2 billion, or 21 percent, since fiscal 2010, according to GOP aides. The cuts mean that EPA will have to reduce its staffing to the lowest levels since 1989.

HEROIN:

In a modest attempt to address a growing crisis with the illicit drug, lawmakers are adding $7 million for a new anti-heroin task force run out of the Justice Department's COPS Office. The money will be used as part of a competitive grant program for drug enforcement, including investigations and operations to stop the distribution or sale of the drug, according to Democrats.

IMMIGRATION:

The bill only funds the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees most immigration policy, until February. But negotiators gave new money for immigration programs at other federal agencies. There's $948 million for the Department of Health and Human Service's unaccompanied children program -- an $80 million increase. The program provides health and education services to the young migrants. The department also gets $14 million to help school districts absorbing new immigrant students. And the State Department would get $260 million to assist Central American countries from where of the immigrant children are coming.

MARIJUANA:

The District of Columbia will be prohibited from legalizing marijuana for the much of the coming year. The development -- upending a voter-approved initiative -- shocked elected D.C. leaders, advocates for marijuana legalization and civil liberties groups. The bill also would block the Justice Department from interfering with state-level medical marijuana measures and prohibits the Drug Enforcement Agency from interfering with industrial hemp production.

PENSIONS:

For the first time, the benefits of current retirees could be severely cut, part of an effort to save some of the nation’s most distressed pension plans. The change would alter 40 years of federal law and could affect millions of workers, many of them part of a shrinking corps of middle-income employees in businesses such as trucking, construction and supermarkets. Read more on this here.

U.S. POSTAL SERVICE:

You like your mail on Saturdays? You'll keep your mail on Saturdays. The bill requires the mail service to continue six-day deliveries, despite a years-long attempt to cut back on service to save money.

TRUCKING:

In a victory for the trucking industry, the bill blocks new Transportation Department regulations requiring truckers to get two nights of sleep before starting a new work week. The regulation slashed a typical trucker's work week to 70 hours, down from 82 hours.
That is just a smidgen of what is in there, so let's recap the above. The Post Office staying open six days a week is probably the only good news above. Campaign contributions will increase ten fold as if that wasn't a big enough problem before. Banks have now succeeded in putting their trillion dollar debt onto FDIC shoulders which means if the derivative market goes belly up, your bank account is going to go right along with it. Drugs are still illegal and the government is giving little more than lip service to the issue, including striking down the DC legalization process the people voted for. As written about in previous posts, hedge funds are stealing 50 cents off the dollar for pensions and are blaming the little guy for the drop in revenue, just like Social Security and Unions. We will have less clean water, less enforcement by the EPA, more tired truckers on the road working long hours for crap pay, and for the right, no cuts to Obamacare or his amnesty plan. Ow, my ass hurts! Someone tell Congress to stop raping us.

There is precious little in this bill that will stop the epic fail we are about to see. The world economy is dying and no one wants to do anything that will actually work as it would require the super rich to not be so super rich anymore. Does anyone honestly think this will happen without force? We are headed for the wall and Idiot America is too stupid to know any better. Prepare because I have a sinking feeling 2015 may be our last.